BOB GARFIELD: For 23 years, the entirety of Robert Mugabe's presidency, journalist Andrew Meldrum has lived and worked in Zimbabwe. In the early years, Meldrum chronicled the tribulations of a fledgling African democracy. In the past few years, he has documented President Mugabe's increasing and increasingly violent destruction of democratic institutions.

For this he has earned the enmity of the government in a year of legal and extra-legal intimidation culminating a week ago in his abduction and expulsion from Zimbabwe. He had been the last foreign correspondent in the country and thus the last journalistic link between the Zimbabwean dictatorship and the West. He joins me now from London. Andrew, once again, welcome to OTM.


ANDREW MELDRUM: Thank you very much.


BOB GARFIELD: Why don't we begin with you telling me what your last 7 days has been like.


ANDREW MELDRUM: What happened was security agents came to our gate at our house to pick me up. My wife said I wasn't there. They said they would wait. It was 4 men in 4 vehicles including a large van with blacked out windows. My lawyer and I went to immigration offices and at that meeting I was served with deportation orders and police surrounded me, took me out and actually - as I spoke to the press that was assembled there, telling them what was -happened - they dragged me away kicking, punching, shoving - put me in a car.

In the car they put a hood over my head and thumped me on the back and said the time for games is over. And I had interviewed many people, including members of Parliament for the opposition party, who the same hood had been put over their head and they were invariably taken to police stations in rural areas and they were beaten and tortured with electric shock and I was understandably worried that that might happen to me.

But instead they drove me around for a while and then took me to the airport after holding me in the basement of the airport for ten hours, they then put me on a plane to London, and I have been doing interviews and things like that about the situation.


BOB GARFIELD: You were the last foreign correspondent left in Zimbabwe before you were kidnapped and chucked out. How is it possible that kicking you out of the country under such public circumstances could be better for Mugabe than simply to have suffered you silently while you remained there reporting?


ANDREW MELDRUM: You're right. They gave themselves a black eye. To haul me off in front of cameras and film crews and journalists, publicly mishandling me, was not the way to silence me. It actually gave me a greater platform.

And also I think I was a symbol of the remainders of a free press in Zimbabwe, and they think that by taking me away in a frightening manner they are going to frighten the remaining Zimbabwean journalists who write for both the foreign media and for the local press, to stop being independent and critical, and I can tell you that it - they're not going to do that, and for that matter, I'm not going to stop publishing as much as I can on Zimbabwe either.


BOB GARFIELD: In the 23 years of Mugabe's reign in Zimbabwe, he has mutated from being a democratic hero to an authoritarian democrat -- if such a thing can exist -- to what is clearly now pure dictatorship, notwithstanding the superficial existence of a constitution and branches of government. Is it that Mugabe has further mutated into a lunatic?


ANDREW MELDRUM: [LAUGHS] Well, I think that he's under a great deal of pressure. The wheels are coming off in Zimbabwe in a big way. There's inflation of 230 percent. Unemployment reaching 70 percent. Food shortages. There's a shortage of gasoline so that you must wait in line for maybe as much as 5 days to get a full tank of gas.

Robert Mugabe is not coming up with any answers to those problems and instead what he's doing is lashing out, I, I think irrationally and, and proof of that is what they did to me.


BOB GARFIELD: I saw the two pieces that you've done in the last few days in The Guardian about your experience in being expelled from Zimbabwe, and if I had to characterize the tone I would say somewhere between plaintive and infuriated, and less the work of a journalist than of an activist. Have you yourself mutated into something other than an objective journalist by virtue of what you've endured for the last two decades?


ANDREW MELDRUM: Oh, I, I don't think so at all. What I am talking about is the need for a free press in Zimbabwe - the need for respect for human rights in the country - and the need for democracy. As far as I'm concerned, those are basic universal principles that any objective person could say they support, and therefore I think any objective journalist can say they support that as well.


BOB GARFIELD: One final question, Andrew. In our past conversations you have maintained some sort of guarded optimism that Robert Mugabe's behavior will eventually get the attention of the international community to the point that somehow it comes to an end. Do you feel naive now for harboring those hopes?


ANDREW MELDRUM: No, Bob, I actually still have that guarded optimism and that determination and confidence that in fact Zimbabwe will be returned to democracy, so I, I guess you just must call me stubborn.


BOB GARFIELD: Well Andrew, as always, it's been a pleasure speaking to you and as always, all best of luck.


ANDREW MELDRUM: Thank you very much.


BOB GARFIELD: Andrew Meldrum is a reporter for The Guardian. He spoke to us from its office in London.
[MUSIC]
MANUEL NAVARETTE: These are stations that differ from government stations which are on the other side of the sector, the right. They say whatever is most convenient to them. They say things like the country doesn't have any problems. Community radio tries to show the other face of the coin, trying to talk about the realities that the country faces, the great problems before us.


SHARON LERNER: On a recent hot Sunday afternoon, a shirtless Navarette sat in Radio Victoria's broadcasting booth wrapping up the latest segment of his show. Outside the station, it's not uncommon to find Manuel in his red FMLN tee shirt, but after a recent shake-up, he's making an effort to keep his political views separate from his radio work.

Anyone who knows Manuel, and that's pretty much everyone in Santa Marta, knows his politics. His father who now farms corn and beans was an FMLN guerilla fighter. Two of his siblings died during the war, one as an FMLN combatant, and Manuel, who plays the guitar and sings, has even written songs for the party.
[MANUEL SINGING UP AND UNDER]

Proclamations of political loyalty are not uncommon in a country where people sometimes paint their party colors on their cow fences, but Canto a la Vida is billed as a musical show -- not a political one.
[MANUEL SPEAKING IN SPANISH, TRANSLATION]


MANUEL NAVARETTE: I play music that practically was all made during the conflict and written by guerilla groups. It was music that reflected the thoughts and feelings of the people. They had prohibited me from playing these songs, and wherever I put them on there was some concern about the outside image of the station. They feared it would be seen as taking sides on this or that issue.


SHARON LERNER: At first Manuel resisted the request not to play guerilla songs and decided to take his show off the air in protest. Rumors spread that he was being censored, and an all-staff meeting was held to discuss the situation. Ultimately he agreed not to play songs that made overt political references, and the fracas died down.

Canto a la Vida is back on the air now. The elections are over. In Victoria's mayoral race, the right wing Arena candidate won. But Radio Victoria's political struggle continues. Christina Star.


CHRISTINA STAR: One of our reporters belongs to the Arena party, and she was elected to like the youth committee of her town, and so we've had to talk to them and say you know either you're with the radio or you're with the political party. You can't be doing both things.
[CHICKENS AND MOUNTAIN AMBIENCE]


SHARON LERNER: Back on the mountain, Joche Lieva hears none of that internal effort.
[JOCHE LIEVA SPEAKING SPANISH, TRANSLATION]


JOCHE LIEVA: The station's only agenda is social. It has no political colors. If a person wants to make an announcement, they can do it perfectly on Radio Victoria, regardless of their party.


SHARON LERNER: Perhaps, for Lieva, Radio Victoria really has achieved the elusive goal of objectivity. Or maybe it's enough that his local station tries to ferret the truth from the messy passions that rule his country.
[RADIO VICTORIA STATION ID IN SPANISH]
For On the Media, I'm Sharon Lerner.
[MUSIC]